


Navigate and I Will Steer (Into the Sun)

by parcequelle



Category: The Closer
Genre: F/F, Gen, Good Girls Gone Bad, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 12:39:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7103800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Was this a mistake?” Sharon asks, for maybe the fifth or sixth time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Navigate and I Will Steer (Into the Sun)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/gifts).



> This was supposed to be a short response to sarken's Tumblr prompt, "a doomed kiss." The doom wanted more. (Title from Fefe Dobson's 'Take Me Away'.)

"Lord Almighty, Sharon, can't you drive any faster?"

This is the first thing Brenda has said to her in twenty minutes of brooding silence, and Sharon sighs a sigh from the marrow of her bones. "Yes, Brenda, I could, but seeing as there is a police vehicle two cars behind us, I figured it was better not to risk it." She refuses to take her eyes off the road, but she catches Brenda leaning forward to check the side mirror and then slumping back in her seat. Sharon feels a small, juvenile, sadistic twist of pleasure at having gotten one up on her.

“We’re the police,” Brenda grumbles. “We should be able to—”

“If you are honestly bemoaning my efforts to avoid drawing undue attention to us right now then you are a simpleton,” Sharon snaps. “Now be quiet and let me concentrate on losing them.”

“I love it when you talk dirty,” Brenda drawls. When Sharon turns to look at her, Brenda’s lip is hitched up and she’s biting down on a smile; Sharon has to force herself to bite down on her own because she will not, will _not_ find this amusing. They’ve driven for about six more miles when Brenda says, “Take the next exit. I know a place.”

Sharon swallows her snide response but does as she’s told, and the tension in the air between them is a real, palpable thing as they both wait to see if the police car – still two cars away – will take the turn with them. When it doesn’t, when it just changes lanes and whizzes past the exit, out of sight, they let out a simultaneous breath of relief. “Oh, my,” Sharon says, “I thought I’d—“

“I know,” Brenda says, softly. “Me too.”

In the next moment, she feels Brenda’s small, cool fingers wrap around hers and squeeze, too tight, and the pressure serves to ground Sharon, clear her mind. She squeezes back. “Where are we going?”

“Head straight on for the next ten or so miles, until you reach a crossroads with a hotel on the corner. I think it’s a hotel, anyway, or maybe a pub. Then take the right.”

“Where are we, anyhow?” Sharon asks, mostly to herself.

Brenda laughs without humour. “Arizona, soon enough.”

They reach the hotel, which is indeed a hotel, and take the right. They’re on the outskirts, now, of whichever town they’ve just passed through; Sharon stopped paying attention to the names a long time ago, stopped registering the repetition of dry soil and barren trees. She doesn’t want to see it, the way the overbearing sun has made everything around them wretched, the stillness only infusing her further with guilt. She swallows on a dry throat, wishes they’d thought to buy water when they’d last stopped for gas.

“Was this a mistake?” she asks, for maybe the fifth or sixth time. She feels Brenda turn to her and sneaks a glance back; she looks drawn and serious, unguarded in a way that makes Sharon’s breath catch for all the wrong reasons.

“I don’t know,” Brenda says. This is the same response she’s given every time Sharon has asked the question, the same response in the same vacant tone. “Left up here, then follow that road up the hill.”

The road is more like a dirt track, the hill more like a mountain, steep and rocky and winding at unpredictable angles, but Sharon has driven through worse. Brenda, thankfully, exercises some self-restraint for the first time in her life and manages to refrain from backseat driving, just indicates when Sharon should continue, should slow down, should turn.

“Should I ask how you know this place exists?” Sharon asks, at one point, but Brenda’s haunted eyes are answer enough. She’s been running on adrenaline and bravado this whole time but she’s as afraid, as ridden with guilt as Sharon is; that she finds that fact a comfort makes Sharon feel sick to her stomach, and she buries the thought.

Finally, Brenda reaches over and grabs her forearm, and Sharon knows they’re nearly there. They drive a bit further, deeper into the trees, and then there’s a shack: a small, run-down, overgrown shack that looks like it’s being held together by force of habit alone. She puts the car into park, reflexively looks around when the motor stops running – she’s half-expecting someone to jump out in front of them, but a minute passes, then two, and then she turns to Brenda, who nods, hands her a pair of crime scene booties she doesn’t want to think too much about. Sharon dons them and gets out, slowly, right hand on the gun in the holster at her hip. Brenda does the same.

Everything’s quiet. Eerie. A turkey vulture soars overhead, a few cicadas click in the trees; Sharon follows Brenda to the entrance of the shack, eyes everywhere, jumpy. She’s never worn guilt as well as Brenda can.

Brenda has gloves on when she tugs the door open, of course, doesn’t touch anything when she pokes her head in to look around. “Still the same,” she mutters. “It’ll do.”

“You just—” Sharon coughs on the words, throat thick. “You just want to—”

“Yes,” Brenda says, before she can finish. “What other choice do we have? You wanna risk settin’ a forest fire that might wipe out the reserve?”

“Of course not, but—”

“You got a better idea?” Brenda turns to her, snaps impatiently at the wrist of her glove. “I mean it, if you can think of something—”

“I can’t,” Sharon mutters. “Let’s just—let’s just get it over with.”

The adrenaline that had loaned them both the strength to get out of L.A. is long gone, replaced by heavy-muscled weariness and the fuzzy-headed fatigue of too many hours spent driving without a break. It takes longer, this time, for them both to heft the body; it takes more manoeuvring, more readjusting, and Sharon can feel that she’s weaker, that she’s inadvertently forcing Brenda to carry more of the weight. It’s only a short walk from the trunk to the door of the shack, but she still almost drops him, once; she grunts out an apology that Brenda either doesn’t hear or chooses to ignore. Sharon doesn’t repeat it.

Brenda had found the tarp at the bottom of a huge cardboard box of Fritz’s labelled ‘Camping Stuff,’ and Sharon’s sneezes for the fifteen minutes after they’d hauled it into the trunk were testament to the unlikelihood of his noticing its absence. Now, inside, they let the whole thing fall, pick up the edges closest to them and roll Stroh’s body out onto the dusty, dirt-covered floor. Then they stand there for a long moment, staring. “He looks almost…”

“Normal?” Brenda supplies.

Sharon nods. “Harmless.”

“He’s only harmless because he’s dead.”

“I know that, Brenda.”

Brenda sighs. “I’m sorry.”

Sharon hadn’t been expecting that; her astonishment must show on her face, because Brenda manages a lopsided smile. “Nice to know I’m still capable of surprisin’ you.”

“Oh, Brenda,” she murmurs, her voice cracking against her name, “somehow I don’t think lack of interest will ever be a problem in this relationship.”

“That’s the first time you’ve called it that, you know.”

Sharon looks at her. “What?”

“That’s the first time you’ve called it a relationship instead of a ‘dalliance’ or an ‘illicit extramarital affair’ or whatall.”

That actually surprises a laugh out of Sharon because – God, Brenda is just so inappropriate that it’s impressive. She shakes her head and says, “You do pick the most suitable times to finally start talking about your feelings.”

“Yeah, well,” Brenda says, gesturing at Stroh’s lifeless body, “this whole thing kinda puts cheatin’ on my husband in perspective, don’t you think?”

That’s enough to snap Sharon out of it and back to reality, back to the musty, fetid air of this room, the corpse before them. “Come on,” she says. She kicks at the tarp, bundled in front of her. “What do you suggest we do with this?”

“We gotta dump it. And then we gotta get back to L.A. before someone figures out we never intended to go to that conference.”

“What about the – are we just going to leave him there like that?”

“What other option is there?”

Sharon’s heart clenches, physically painful, as she says, “Burn him.”

“Sharon, we _can’t_. We’ll take everything down with us. We could kill people.”

The irony that that is Brenda’s concern right now, in this nightmare of a situation, makes her want to sob. “What if we were to douse the shack in water first? That should stop the fire from spreading too fast, shouldn’t it?”

“Theoretically,” Brenda says slowly, “but we—no. I ain’t doin’ it. I ain’t gonna stoop to Bill Croelick’s level.” She gathers the tarp in her arms and stalks out of the shack and back to the car. “Let’s just get outta here, okay, Sharon?”

Sharon is so far from okay, but what choice do they have? Even if her plan were feasible, they don’t have any water, and she knows from the other side of this equation that the more time they spend here, the more likely they are to leave potentially damning evidence in their wake. As it is, they take the few extra minutes to brush their more obvious footprints out of the dirt.

Once they’re back on the road, the distance between the car and the body not increasing with nearly enough speed, Brenda says, “I know a gentleman in Phoenix.”

Sharon thinks about this a long moment, deduces only one explanation. “CIA.”

“He might be able to help us get rid of the car.”

“Can you trust him?”

“’bout as much as I can trust anyone from the Company, so no,” Brenda snorts, “but he owes me a favour or two and he won’t ask questions.”

“Same city as the conference,” Sharon murmurs. “Convenient. How do we explain it, though? The car?”

“Hijacked. Stolen.” Brenda shrugs. “Could’ve been taken to a chop-shop who knows where. Maybe we were held hostage and that’s why we weren’t in contact – we have time to corroborate our story, agree on a couple of details we’ll remember a little differently, to make it authentic. The other option is staging a crash, but I don’t like our chances of doin’ that convincingly on our own.”

Some distant, bewildered part of Sharon is in awe of Brenda’s ability to think so rationally under these circumstances. It’s a side of her she’s witnessed hundreds of times in the interview room, this cool, analytical, laser-focused mind that misses nothing, but it’s only now that she’s gotten her first real glimpse of what an asset Brenda must have been to the CIA. It’s a little frightening, but if she’s honest, it’s more than a little attractive, too. Cool competence has always made her weak in the knees.

They trash the tarp in a dumpster at a construction site off the motorway, abandoned for the day but seemingly still active; Brenda figures it’ll be buried by the end of the morning and somewhere in landfill by the end of the week. Sharon hopes she’s right, tries not to fantasise worst-case scenarios where the site manager, an amateur sleuth and lifelong fan of CSI, finds it and turns it in to the local cops.

Brenda’s driving, this time, and they’re both quiet. The next time Sharon speaks, it’s almost dark, twilight dusting the sky; they’re just outside Surprise, Arizona, and she asks the question that’s been on her mind for the last two hours: “How are we going to find your contact when neither of us has a phone?” 

“There’s a meeting place,” Brenda says. “But it might have changed.”

This statement doesn’t exactly fill Sharon with confidence but she says nothing, just stares out the window at the passing streetlights, counts the dandelions sprouting out the gaps in the sidewalk. 

As it turns out, the meeting place hasn’t changed; after engaging in a series of head-scratching riddles and tapping a Morse code message onto something that looks like an upturned bucket, Brenda looks over at Sharon, the first glimmer of triumph on her face since the whole thing happened, and announces, “He’ll help us, provided I go alone.”

“No,” Sharon says, with more vehemence than she’d have expected, given how empty, how bone-tired she feels. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it, either,” Brenda says, “but what choice do I have?”

“Don’t go! That’s the choice you have!”

Brenda smiles at her, a ghost of a thing, extends her fingers to link through Sharon’s; they’re both still wearing the gloves, and Sharon’s heart aches at the farce of human contact, at not being able to feel her fingers, but neither she nor Brenda moves to take them off. “I’m gonna be fine, Sharon. I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can,” Sharon says, sighing. “I know you can. But what if this is a set-up? What if this he kills you?”

“Then I’ll die knowin’ Stroh ain’t on the loose anymore,” she jokes, but it pinches at Sharon’s already-frayed nerves. Brenda must notice, because she leans in close – makeup smudged, lipstick a memory, dark circles under her eyes – and manages a smile that looks almost genuine. “We’re almost there, Sharon. We’re almost there.”

 _And then we’ll just spend the rest of our lives lying awake at night because of the guilt_ , Sharon doesn’t say. She wonders if it’ll be like that, really, or if they’ll be able to dose themselves up on the cold comfort of knowing that Stroh can’t hurt anyone else, that they’ve really done the universe a favour. She isn’t sure she wants to think that far ahead. “Almost there,” she repeats instead. And then, because it just comes out more than because she wants to say it, “I love you, Brenda.” She isn’t sure she knows it’s true until it’s out there, hanging between them, thin and fragile like a cobweb.

Brenda doesn’t say it back, but she does kiss her – really kisses her, sucks Sharon’s bottom lip into her mouth and strokes her tongue over Sharon’s, hot and languid as though they have all the time in the world. “I’ll be back,” she says, and then she’s gone.

Sharon’s task, in her absence, is to 1) check into the hotel next door to where the conference is being held, and 2) try to act natural. She manages both well until she gets to the room, where she bursts into tears as soon as the door has closed behind her; she stumbles to the shower, breathing hard, turns it on too hot and steps under it before she’s even removed all her clothes. The guilt, she thinks, the guilt is actually going to kill her, it’s going to crush her heart against her ribs and keep pushing up up up on her windpipe until she just stops breathing altogether. Maybe she’ll deserve it.

She scrubs her skin raw and washes her hair with the awful minty hotel shampoo, finds and plugs in a hairdryer with shaking hands. She wishes the noise would drown out the ringing in her ears, the stampede in her head, but she tries to breathe through it, tries to rationalise – hilariously, insanely – that this is normal, a natural response to having helped murder someone and then gone to great pains to hide the body.

She’s left her overnight bag in the car, but there’s an extra shirt in her purse; it’s a bit crinkled and musty and it doesn’t entirely match her shoes, but she isn’t in a position to be choosy. Her other shirt is sopping wet, so she hangs it over the towel rail to dry.

Should she go down to the bar, she wonders? Suddenly everything feels like a risk, every movement another dangerous, unwanted opportunity to be caught somewhere on CCTV. She keeps trying to tell herself that they’re allowed to be here, they’re supposed to be here, that no one can know from looking at them what they’ve done, that her own guilt is the thing most likely to give them away. That Brenda Leigh Johnson would be able to figure out who committed this crime, but Brenda Leigh Johnson isn’t looking, so maybe she’s safe. Maybe they’re safe. Maybe they should palm the case off on the FBI, she thinks, snorting. Ensure it’ll never get solved.

Out of tears, her body a vacuum, Sharon changes back into her still-wearable clothes. She’d gotten into the shower with her nylons still half on her feet, so they’re no use; she hangs them up to dry beside the shirt.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting on the edge of the still-made bed, gazing unseeing at the painting on the opposite wall, when she hears a soft knock. “Sharon? You in there?”

When she opens the door, Brenda looks exhausted but none the worse for wear, and Sharon releases her fear in one long, hard breath. She steps aside to let Brenda in, takes the two overnight bags out of her hands and sets them on the bed, and she waits until the door has swung shut before she says, “You’re still alive, then.”

Brenda doesn’t respond immediately, but takes Sharon’s hand and leads her into the bathroom, where she closes the door and turns on the shower. She doesn’t move to undress, though, just turns back to Sharon. “Precaution,” she says, gesturing to the spray. “You never know.”

Sharon nods, though the thought chills her. Then, “So?”

“Taken care of.”

“Did he ask questions?”

“A couple.” Brenda smiles a little, twisted. “Nothin’ he didn’t need to know.”

Brenda is still holding her hand – Sharon is still holding hers, rather, vice-like grip crushing her fingers, and when she realises she hurriedly lets go. “Sorry,” she murmurs. “You should have said something.”

Brenda shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.”

They watch one another for a long moment, a moment that speaks of the years they’ve both aged in the last two days – Sharon studies the dark, resigned change in Brenda’s eyes, the one that comes, unavoidably, from having intentionally taken a life. She doesn’t have to wonder if her own eyes bear the same change; she can see it in the way Brenda looks at her. There’s no room for pity here, really. Just facts.

The shower is still running behind them, a steady pulse, and Sharon reaches out, strokes a fallen lock of hair out of Brenda’s eyes and then leaves her fingers where they are; Brenda almost smiles. “So what do we do now?” Sharon asks her. “What’s our next step?”

Brenda turns her head to brush a kiss across the heel of Sharon’s palm, a too-gentle motion, uncharacteristic, that makes Sharon’s heart constrict. Brenda says: “I guess we go on living.”


End file.
